Wireless networks, such as 3G and long-term evolution (LTE) wireless networks, use control plane messages to connect to and control various wireless devices on the network. The control messages occupy a small percentage, about 1%, of a 15Gbps data stream. It is beneficial to record the control plane messages in real time for network troubleshooting and optimization purposes.
One percent of 15Gbps, or 150Mbps of digital data stream, is equivalent to 80,000 table rows per second. A database table, when filled at such a high speed, would exceed a billion rows in less than four hours, which would considerably slow down rows insertion and data search queries, making such a database fail to be updateable in real time.
One known method to avoid very large database sizes is database partitioning. A database can be broken into smaller, manageable units or segments, and rows insertion in those segments can be performed much faster. By way of example, Abrink in US Patent Application Publication 2008/0256029 discloses a partition management system for a real-time gaming database having at least one database table. The system comprises a clock-driven partition controller, which automatically and periodically creates table partitions in advance, so that at least one table partition is always available prior to a moment when a new data is received.
In the partition controller of Abrink, the partitions are created regardless of whether data storage requests are present. This can create many empty partitions, thus reducing the speed and efficiency of the database. Furthermore, requests to truncate old partitions may conflict with the data entry requests, which can lead to a lockout of the entire database.